On behalf of several developers and key Debian persons, Jörg Jaspert has posted an very critical position statement to Dunc-Tank. Update: DPL Anthony Towns have now responded to the post.
Update: Response to the below post is found on the list here

Quote:

Hi,

After a long and ambivalent discussion during the last weeks the project“Dunc Tank” (short DT from now on) has recently started. We considerthat to be a major change to the Debian project culture: For the firsttime Debian Developers are paid for their work on Debian by ainstitution so near to the project itself.

While we disagree with DT for the reasons outlined below, we want tostate that this is not against the two people who should now benefitFrom it. We do trust Andreas and Steve that they do the best they canand only intend to do something good for Debian.

With this mail we would like to summarize our thoughts about the DTproject and the idea behind it. We also want to raise some questions westill consider unanswered and open:

- Why were the release managers (RMs) chosen as beneficiary for this experiment? There are several areas within the Debian project that we consider equally important and full-time work there could benefit the project way more. Especially since it is clear now that we currently can not keep the scheduled release date, even with DT paying our RMs.

- What exactly are the release managers being paid for? There surely must be more than a simple “Stay at home, work on Debian” in their contract.

- How does DT want to know whether the release managers stick to their part of the agreement?

- How is the success of this “experiment” measured? (For the release as well as for the entire project)

- How do these measurements make sure that the observed consequences are based on the experiment?

- How is it planned or is it even possible to compare the consequences of the experiment with a state of the project without this experiment?

- What actions have been taken to ensure that potential negative outcomes of the experiment won't affect the Debian project?

- Has it taken into account that several developers who have spent large chunks of time on Debian before got demotivated to continue their work?

- How do these measurements try to compare positive and negative effects on the release as well as the Debian project itself?

- During the discussion before the experiment it was said that the living costs of the release managers are to be paid. Additionally it was said that it is “providing a reasonable amount of money to cover living expenses” and later on, that this is “below the average” they could get elsewhere. However, the official donation site[1] mentions US$ 6000.00 for each release manager. We do consider this to be neither just “living costs” nor “below average”, not even by applying common taxes and insurances one has to pay. On what grounds has this amount been calculated?

Although DT claims to be separate from Debian, we still feel that we areentitled to an answer to our questions, since after all, we are thepeople DT is experimenting with!

After this set of questions let us comment on DT and present our opinionabout statements made by DT supporters and board members.

One claim of the DT people is that this “is only an experiment”. Yetthis whole affair already hurts Debian more than it can ever achieve. Italready made a lot of people who have contributed a huge amount of timeand work to Debian reduce their work. People left the project, othersare orphaning packages, the NEW queue is rising, system administrationand security work is reduced, DWN is no longer released weekly and a lotof otherwise silent maintainers simply put off Debian work and work onsomething else. While some of these actions simply tend to happen, allthe listed points are explicitly due to DT. Compared to possiblebenefits one may see – e.g. releasing near a time we promised to releaseat – in our opinion this is not worth the trouble DT already got us in.

Another bad feeling introduced by DT is that of a two-classproject. Until DT, Debian has been a completely volunteer-basedproject. Today there are two paid Release Managers, opposed to all otherproject members. This creates a set of two “uber-DDs”, in contrast toall the other nearly 1000 Developers and many more maintainers, whosework seems to be considered less important for Debian. It is ridiculousto set a deadline and then to create a project to pay those two peoplewho set the deadline, but ignore the huge amount of work other peopleput into Debian. It is not as if those two Release Managers are nowdoing all the work that needs to be done, it is expected that they goand “direct” other people to do the work for the release. So why don'twe pay all of them also? Aren't they worth the money?

Another statement we heard repeatedly from DT supporters is that “DT isa separate project and not Debian”. We do think that this is, at best, ajoke. The DT board consists solely of the current Debian Project Leader,his assistant and other high-profile Debian Developers, working on aDebian related project. This simply can't be seen as something separatedFrom Debian and the public has already proven that it doesn't considerit a totally separate project.

We also heard a lot of sentences like “this happens since years, DT isnothing new”. We do acknowledge that people get paid for work on Debianissues since years. We do not have a problem with this fact per se,quite the opposite is true. The big difference between DT and any randomcompany paying people to work on Debian is that companies usually paypeople to work on stuff they benefit from, for example a programmer thatenhances a program in Debian and also happens to be the packagemaintainer has the permission to maintain the package in Debian duringits work time. Or some system administrator that can enhance packages inDebian which then also benefits his work (like fixing bugs he thendoesn't have to fix on every package upgrade). The important point hereis that it does not involve an employer employee situation withinDebian, which DT is now introducing.

So, to summarize DTs effects on Debian: It has demotivated a lot ofpeople who now either resigned, simply stopped doing (parts of their)Debian work or are doing a lot less than they did before DT wasstarted. The freeze got delayed and getting the release out on schedulehas become nearly impossible. We are unable to see any good virtue inthis “experiment”.

The heated discussion DT has consumed an incredible amount oftime and energy that could also have been used in a much more productiveway. This was probably expected from the DT initiators but didn't keepthem from setting off this discussion at such an important time -shortly before the release. Why they didn't introduce DT *after* therelease, or much much earlier in this release cycle, when there is/wastime and a lengthy discussion would not have taken otherwise needed timeis not understandable.

Having said all this and also risking yet another flamewar, let us makea last request for now: Please have a healthy discussion, let the DTpeople answer these questions, tell them (or us) if they (or we) made wrongassumptions or something, but please do not flame.